"Van Helsing" may be ambitious in scale, but it's unambitious in every other way. Writer-director Stephen Sommers ("The Mummy") throws together plot strains from various horror movies and stories and tries to muscle things along with flash and dazzle. But his film just lies there, weighted down by a complete lack of wit, artfulness and internal logic.

So it's a disaster -- a big, loud, boring wreck -- but to say that isn't enough. "Van Helsing" has the look of a failed experiment, as well, and that makes it almost interesting. Almost. What Sommers tries to do here is use action as the only means of involving an audience. So story is sacrificed. Character development is nonexistent, and there are no attempts to incite emotion. Instead, Sommers tries to hold an audience for two hours with nothing up his sleeve but colored ribbons, bright sparklers and a kazoo. What he proves is that this is no way to make movies.

A sinking feeling sets in within minutes. Van Helsing is in Paris tracking down Dr. Jekyll who, in his Hyde mode, is computer generated. (Imagine that, a potion that turns a man into a computer graphic.) They get into a battle -- who knows why, or cares? -- atop Notre Dame cathedral, with virtually every moment of every shot artificially created, the soundtrack blaring all the way. The juxtaposition of Van Helsing and Hyde has a random mindlessness to it, and it's soon followed by other random juxtapositions (the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Dracula) best suited to an Abbott and Costello farce.

But no, we soon catch on: This is no farce. Sommers is serious. And oh, no, we also realize: There's no one on deck here who can write a story. From then on, we know "Van Helsing" promises to be one long slog. In that way, and in only that way, the movie fulfills its promise.

What can Hugh Jackman do? He stalks the film in what looks like a turtleneck from Old Navy, playing a man with no recognizable psychological structure. The vague glances at a back story make no sense. We're told he's a contract killer, working for the Vatican, killing evil entities. He doesn't remember his past, but it has something to do with Transylvania, and so he takes an assignment to kill Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), who's acting up. Jackman has nothing to play but blank good looks.

Ditto for Kate Beckinsale as Anna, the woman at the head of Dracula's hit list. The movie outfits her with pirate boots and a Romanian corset, but past that, she's on her own, a pretty actress doing her best to maintain dignity, vainly trying to craft a feminist statement from a filmmaker's whimsy.

The movie is numbingly hyperactive. Here, vampires can attack day or night, and they do, relentlessly, particularly Dracula's three wives, merry female bats who delight in taunting their victims. In between bat attacks, the slender yet convoluted story doesn't exactly unfold. It just gets announced now and then, as the characters state the premise of scenes to each other as though at a pitch meeting.

Dracula wants two things. He wants to kill Anna, and he wants to find the Frankenstein monster. Apparently, Frankenstein contains the secret of life, and Dracula wants to create life. He wants lots of little Draculas out there, depopulating the earth of humans and competing for an ever-decreasing blood supply. Obviously, Dracula hasn't thought this through. But why should he? Sommers didn't even decide if Dracula should be a funny or serious character. The film veers wildly in tone, from mirthless comedy to bland drama, caught in a dead zone, its writer-director out of control.

The Wolf Man makes several appearances, alternately ferocious and forlorn in the usual Wolf Man way, and it's an odd thing. Today, the technology is there to make the transformation convincing, and yet seeing it means exactly nothing to us -- so much less than when poor Lon Chaney Jr. would struggle in those old movies, trying to hold onto his humanity even as he sprouted fur all over his body. I suppose when there's no humanity to begin with, there's nothing to hold onto, and thus no loss and no drama.

Still, it's daunting. To think of all the tools Sommers had at his command -- all the money, all the computer wizardry -- and yet his film has no more art than what a chimpanzee might do with an Etch a Sketch. Throughout the movie, Dracula tries to re-create life from without, as though high-voltage technology could replace that which comes from within. Talk about metaphors. Once they believe that lie, mad scientists and filmmakers will get in trouble every time.